Most resorts recover quickly from disaster

January 16, 2005|By Lisa Kalis and James Brooke, New York Times News Service.

How quickly--if ever--can the devastated resorts of Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives return to business as usual?

While the humanitarian crisis from the Indian Ocean tsunami is horrific--with about 150,000 people dead and thousands more still unaccounted for--the impact on tourism may be somewhat limited. In the main tourist destinations affected, the beach resorts of Thailand and Sri Lanka and the islands of the Maldives, the majority of hotels are ready for business. Of those damaged, many should reopen within months.

When it comes to tourism, the region has faced bigger challenges. Rakesh Shankar, an economist specializing in Asia with the research group Economy.com, said the tsunami's impact would be far less than the SARS outbreak, which kept tourists away from Asia for two years. "The question is, are countries going to have the infrastructure to deal with it," he said. He expected that tourism would be mostly back to normal by the summer in Thailand, and within a year in Sri Lanka. However, in the Maldives, he said full recovery could take two or three years.

Chua Hak Bin, senior regional economist for DBS Bank in Singapore, also predicted that the long-term impact on tourism would be minimal. "This is fundamentally different than SARS or the terrorist attacks in Bali," he said. He estimated that in Thailand, tourist arrivals to the southern province would drop by about 20 percent in the first six months of 2005 and that the numbers would then return to normal.

Other natural disasters have also been more costly. Robert Hartwig, chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, estimated insurance claims of less than $5 billion, mostly from large hotel chains and multinational corporations. Last year, the hurricanes in Florida cost insurers $21.6 billion, 33 percent of which went to hotels and other businesses.

Here is a picture of how countries struck by the tsunami are affected.

Sri Lanka

"It is a coastal disaster," said John Vasatka, general manager for Amanresorts hotels in Sri Lanka. "You go one or two kilometers inland and you don't see the effects." Based on what he had seen so far, Vasatka said he thought the damage seemed more limited than Florida's Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which he also witnessed. "It's a much more localized area. We hope it will be much easier to rebuild."

For Sri Lanka, the disaster came at a particularly crucial time. In 2002, the country emerged from a 20-year civil war, and it seemed to be at a turning point for tourism. (One travel magazine recently named it "the new Bali.") Through October, the number of foreign visitors, mostly from Western Europe, had risen 12 percent over same period in 2003, according to Sri Lankan tourism officials.

"We were looking forward to a bumper season," said Geoffrey Dobbs, a British expatriate who came to Sri Lanka 10 years ago and now owns four tourism properties there.

As of early this month, 56 of Sri Lanka's 243 hotels were closed. In a press release, the tourist board estimated that nearly all the major beach hotels would be open by the end of February. The luxury Triton Hotel on the west coast, one of nine properties on Sri Lanka owned by Aitken Spence Hotels, is an exception; it's closed indefinitely while the company assesses the damage.

Upscale Amanresorts, based in Singapore, had two new hotels planned on Sri Lanka for 2005. A spokeswoman, Trina Dingler Ebert, said the chain decided to move into Sri Lanka because of its pristine beaches and relative lack of development. Water did not reach the company's Amangalla hotel, built behind a 17th Century Dutch fort in the popular city of Galle. However, the mid-January opening has been pushed back a few weeks while the city itself rebuilds. (Galle, on the southwestern corner of the island, was particularly hurt, and half of its 49 hotels are closed.) The opening date for the damaged Amanwella resort near Tangalle has been pushed from January to February.

Waves damaged the 16 beach villas at the luxury Blue Water hotel, owned by Jetwing Hotels, but they are once again open. Another Jetwing property, the Yala Safari Game Lodge on the southeastern coast, was completely washed away, and many staff members and guests died. The lodge should be rebuilt within a year, said its marketing director, Lalin de Mel.

Not all of Sri Lanka's attractions are damaged, or on the coast. The 37 hotels in Colombo are open, and the Cultural Triangle, archeological sites restored with help from UNESCO, lies safely inland. The east coast of the island suffered the most deaths, but had relatively few hotels, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.

Dobbs' Sun House hotel, in Galle, is unharmed and is housing families in need. Two other Dobbs properties, Taprobane Island and the Beach House, were damaged, but in a phone interview, Dobbs said, "People are bouncing back much more quickly than I thought they would."